Study: Wyoming Has Some of the Slowest Internet in America

In Wyoming, sometimes we take things slow and we kinda like it that way. Unfortunately, a new study says that one of those slow things is internet access.

I saw this study shared by Thrillist. It was based on a survey by High Speed Internet.com. The have an internet "speed" map which shows you that Wyoming is among the slowest in America.

High Speed Internet.com

This map shows that Wyoming has a speed of 33.3 Mbps. I have several takeaways from this information. First, I am not surprised at all that we are ranked near Idaho, Montana and South Dakota. You have to figure that our geography is similar so fiber and general infrastructure would face the same typical challenges. What I don't understand is how we're slower than Mississippi. Mississippi? Really. I hear they don't always wear shirts down there.

Much of Wyoming would likely be considered rural area to city folk since we don't have many metros. Forbes did a story last year about the internet problems that rural areas face when it comes to access to faster internet. A majority of people in their survey that live in rural areas consider internet speed a serious problem.

What's the answer? It could be Elon Musk's Starlink project. He has a near constant launch of satellites with the stated goal of making broadband internet available worldwide. There are reports of Wyomingites seeing those Starlink satellites in our skies and it could be that this will eventually offer all of our state a more reasonable internet speed comparable to our neighbors in Colorado who are rated among the fastest in the country. Time will tell if this works out to be true. Let's hope.